


The One Where Kaladin Falls

by kriswithakay



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Angst, Graphic Injury, Hurt Kaladin, Injury Recovery, he gets better quickly but it's not fun, no major spoilers, takes place vaguely after the end of Oathbringer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 03:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriswithakay/pseuds/kriswithakay
Summary: When he finally noticed his lashing weakening unexpectedly, Kaladin had only a moment to consider how storming stupid he'd been before the well of his Stormlight abruptly ran dry and he began to arc downward.ORKaladin learns the hard way that even though Stormlight will save your life, it's not easy or without pain.





	The One Where Kaladin Falls

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically just me exploring what it might feel like to heal from a traumatic injury (or several) through stormlight, because it can't be very comfortable can it? (this probably isn't actually canon compliant considering the kind of stuff Shallan survives without trouble, but I'm too interested in the idea of feeling your body put itself back together to let this go)

Kaladin didn’t feel afraid as he fell out of the sky. The sky is his, the winds are his, why should he be afraid to plummet? He’s taken a descent like this before, many times, had deliberately trained away any nervousness he might feel at the sight of the stones rushing up to meet him. His Stormlight never failed him, allowing him to pull up and away before he was too late. He was never in any danger while he was in the sky, a glowing silhouette against the clouds. Of course, that was when he was actually able to glow.

He hadn’t meant to run out of Stormlight, obviously. But he had been filled with the fidgety, anxious mania that Stormlight gave him when he was exhausted, and he was trying to return to Urithiru as quickly as possible. He had streaked over the countryside of Alethkar as a glowing blur, passing foothills and fields and silent towns. He hadn’t stopped to trade his spheres for fresh ones with the occupied towns and manors, even when he knew he should have. He was abuzz with energy, relishing the sting of wind in his eyes, the way the windspren spun and weaved around him like a choreographed dance. He would stop at the next town, he had told himself. It wasn’t that far, and he wanted to stay in the air just a little longer. He was fine.

He was a storming fool. And when he finally noticed his lashing weakening unexpectedly, he had only a moment to consider that fact before the well of his Stormlight abruptly ran dry and he began to arc downward.

He fell away from his place among the windspren, his long uniform coat flapping around his legs, eyes wide and fixed on the lights of the small town that was, indeed, not far. The momentum of his flight kept him moving forward as well as down, the lights from the village growing brighter. He was so close, had been so close to being able to land safely and trade for more Stormlight. Instead he kept his eyes open wide, looking at those dim steady lights shining through windows and around shutters, and felt no fear as he fell out of the embrace of his winds. There were people outside in the village, a few on the outskirts had already spotted him and were pointing, not realizing the uncontrolled nature of his descent. Had he passed through this village the last time he took a trip like this, when he had left Hearthstone to follow the parshmen? He was in the right region, and even if he hadn’t stopped in this village they must have received word from the ones he had visited. His reputation preceded him. There weren’t many people they could mistake him for, after all.

All of this passed through his mind quickly as his arc through the air rapidly changed from forward-and-down to down-and-down-and-down. He had just about reached the outskirts of the village, he could see the steady glow of Stormlight through the window of a small timber home with a sloped roof. He cursed himself loudly, the wind tugging the words out of his mouth. At least he wasn’t crashing out in the hills where there was no help around for days. There were people here, and there was Stormlight he could use. He was a Radiant, and he was resilient. The stones seemed to thrust up eagerly to meet him, a spark of panic finally wormed its way into Kaladin’s gut. This crash wouldn’t kill him. But he might wish it would.

Kaladin crashed into the roof of the timber home, and continued to crash right through it. It splintered and broke under him, and Kaladin blessedly felt and saw nothing for the several seconds in which he burst into the home of a farmer and his young wife, landing atop and immediately shattering their kitchen table, slamming to an abrupt stop on his back with a wet crunch a bit like the sound made when crushing an icicle under your boot.

Kaladin lived. This is the most that could be said for what he did in the following few minutes of chaos. The couple who owned the house, who had fortuitously just stepped outside to see what all the yelling about the flying radiant was, immediately rushed back inside to find Kaladin, barely alive and arguably conscious, in the process of drowning in his own blood on the remains of their table. The few diamond marks placed by their bed went dun in the next moment as Kaladin managed to suck in a wet breath. Presumably the Stormlight did something for him, though it was so little and ran out so quickly that he couldn’t say exactly what.

Kaladin was vaguely aware of a great deal of movement and noise all around him, while his eyes stared sightlessly through the hole in the roof above him. Everything around him seemed to swim, his whole head felt like it was wrapped in bandages. He vaguely remembered how he’d felt when he fell into the sea of beads in the Cognitive Realm, the sensation of all those thousands of beads crushing him down and forcing their way into his mouth and nose. This felt a little like that, he decided, only it didn’t at all. If he had been even a little bit more aware he would have known that that didn’t make sense, but instead his thoughts drifted in no direction in particular.

It was only when a pair of hands moved under his shoulders, beginning to lift him, that the pain finally registered. Kaladin was barely able to breathe, but he managed to scream at least enough for the pulling hands to stop touching him. And now that he had been made aware of it, there was no way to escape the pain. There was blood and flesh and broken teeth in the back of his throat, choking him, his lungs burned and screamed with every tiny intake of breath he could manage, and he was struck with the terrifying realization that something inside of him had simply _burst_.

_Massive internal bleeding_, he tried to think, tried desperately to catalogue injuries as if he was only a surgeon observing a patient. That was difficult when he couldn’t actually see beyond a smear of color and light, couldn’t move except to take shallow, too-wet breaths. _Broken bones, most likely including the back and neck, blood in the lungs, possible shattered skull. Dislocated left leg, wood shard through the side, and- oh, _he had bitten his tongue in half.

“Stormlight,” he tried to say, but what came out was only an animalistic noise of agony through his clenched teeth.

There was movement around him, sound, voices that seemed to speak in an alien tongue. Shouting. There were more people moving around him now, and Kaladin could only stare blankly above him, unable to move even to close his eyes. He had felt pain before, had fallen before, had almost died before. Nothing compared to this, this feeling that he had been laid out and slammed with a massive hammer. Except the hammer was the earth, and this was all Kaladin’s own doing. His own foolish desire to stay in the sky.

_T_he_ sky_, he thought nonsensically, and knew that if he were a regular man he wouldn’t have survived the landing at all. Maybe he shouldn’t have anyway.

Hands were on him again, and this time the scream that came was high and girlish. There was a light pressure on Kaladin’s broken chest, so slight that he never should have been able to feel it with the agony lacing through him, yet he could. It was the only thing Kaladin could feel that wasn’t torture, so he clung to the feeling. He couldn’t turn his head down to see Syl, but he felt her weight and heard her voice. Was she speaking to him, or to the villagers? Could they see her, hear her? Could they understand her, was all noise incomprehensible to them too?

_It might be too late_, Kaladin thought. _Is it possible to recover from pain like this, even with Stormlight_? It felt like every part of his body, every cell had been separated and laced back together with burning hot metal.

And then there was light nearby, someone was rushing into the cottage with an armful of light and Kaladin jerked involuntarily, gasping in a breath that felt like a knife to the heart and Stormlight rushed into him in a wave. And it hurt, Stormfather it hurt even more than before how was that even possible how could one body contain so much anguish at once and Kaladin was aware he was screaming as the glow suffused his body, could feel every nerve in his body as his spine knit back together, his head jerked to the side and his neck slid back into its correct place and finally he could move enough to form fists with his broken fingers. The hole in his right lung scarred over and filled in with new flesh and he finally took in a breath that was free of the wet sucking sound of before. And then the light ran out and he rolled his head to the side, coughed and spat out the mangled flesh that had been his tongue, heaved and choked until he vomited up globs of mucus and blood and several of his teeth, and then he couldn’t find the will even to move his head out of the puddle. Every breath he took was still a lance of pain through broken ribs and ruptured organs, the pain was still unbearable, but the very worst, most urgent parts of it had been healed.

“More, go get more!” someone said loudly, too loudly, the cracks in Kaladin’s skull hadn’t been healed and everything was too loud, too bright, and he could see again but none of it made any sense. All the lines around him were too sharp, the colors too bright, and he could feel that pressure still on his chest. He could feel it, feel the individual shapes of wavering blue fingers pressed to his flesh, knees covered by an indistinct girlish skirt. Syl was kneeling on his chest, and Kaladin wanted to weep in gratitude for her presence. He was already weeping he realized, had been staring with his eyes open for so long that tears streamed down his cheeks.

A face leaned over him, a . . . man? He couldn’t be sure. Everything around him was overexposed, shadows too dark and light too blinding. Nothing was right, it was all wrong, it-

“Here!” another voice, and without having to look or think Kaladin breathed in the small amount of Stormlight that had just entered his range. It wasn’t as much as before, not nearly enough, but some of the sharpness in his gut faded, and then there was someone else with a handful of light, and someone else after that, and by the time someone entered with another full armful of spheres Kaladin was almost able to breathe without pain.

It continued like that for a period of time that Kaladin could not even begin to measure. Common men and women rushed in and out with all the spheres they could find to hand, bringing him scraps of healing while others ran for the light eyes of the village to get some of his spheres to bring back in bulk. Kaladin lay on the floor of the cottage, letting the pain wash over him feeling every piece of himself repairing, his burst blood vessels sewing themselves back together, his bones twisting and slipping into alignment. Felt his skull shift and fuse into one whole piece, felt his new teeth burst through his gums, felt the stump of his tongue elongate and grow.

It was a long time later, the night outside fading into a gray morning, when Kaladin blinked for the first time since his crash and slowly sat up, leaning on his elbows for support.

The village was bereft of Stormlight, every sphere in every house brought to him and drained dun. Kaladin’s body was still full of pain, bruised ribs and a shallow gash where a bit of the roof had impaled his side. He felt weak and unworthy, horrifyingly aware of just how close he had come to death even despite his abilities, because of his carelessness. He turned his head slowly, wincing, taking in the interior of the cottage for the first time, and its occupants. Half the village was crammed in around him, and the rest were probably waiting outside. The farmer and his wife, along with a light eyes in a coat a few years out of style were standing closest to him, eyes wide and uncertain. Everyone was hushed and quiet, aware that that night they had witnessed as close to a miracle as they were ever likely to see. A Knight Radiant returning from the brink of death.

Kaladin pulled his face into a half smile, nodding at the farmer. “Sorry about your table,” he croaked. “I can pay you for a replacement.” 


End file.
